'There is a cross-current.' It was Dietrich who had spoken and now Burckhardt could feel the first signs of the ship heeling from starboard to port. The Hydra, its overstrained engines thumping heavily, began to move chaotically in the churning seas, like a gyroscope out of control. Sick with dread, Burckhardt watched Schnell struggling with the wheel to keep the vessel on the nightmarish course Nopagos had dictated, a course which seemed to have no direction at all as the ferry wallowed amid the inferno of near-tidal high waves rolling in all directions as the cross-current grew stronger. Soon the ship was being driven two ways – forward by the labouring engines and sideways by the powerful current from the east. Then for several minutes they suffered the illusion that they were making no progress – until the illusion was shattered in a particularly terrifying manner. Burckhardt had been under the impression that great bursts of spray in the near-distance were the product of huge waves colliding with each other and disintegrating, but as the spray settled briefly he saw an immense shadow rising in the night and knew that he was staring at the almost vertical rock face of the towering cliffs which barred their way. The surf was exploding at the base of the cliffs as the waves destroyed themselves against the barrier. Horror-struck, he heard Dietrich's voice close to his ear, a low rumble like a knell of doom. 'I estimate we are six hundred metres from them…' The Hydra reached the crest of a wave and now they were near enough to see huge billows shattering against the awful monolith of rock, sending up blurred spray which rose a good hundred feet above the gyrating crests of the Aegean far below. Burckhardt felt a constriction of the throat as he gazed with fascination at the spectacle – the rock face rearing upwards, the spurs st its base momentarily exposed as the sea receded, the lift of the Hydra 's bows, so close now that with their next fall it seemed they must rara down on that immovable rock base. And from the heaving bridge they could hear a new, sinister sound – the boom of the sea as it drove against the massive bastion of the headland. For the first time Burckhardt felt compelled to speak, to voice a navigational question. He had to lift his voice so that Schnell, still crouched over the wheel, could hear him above the shrieking wind and the steady roar of sea breaking against the cliff face.
'What's gone wrong? We're nearly on top of Cape Zervos!' Schnell made no reply, didn't even turn round as Burckhardt took a step forward, grabbing Nopagos tightly by the arm as he spoke harshly in Greek, trying to trap the man into an admission by the suddenness of his approach. 'We're too close, aren't we? You've done it deliberately…'
Nopagos stood perfectly still, his body frozen rigid under the German's grip. As he turned to gaze directly at the colonel, Hahnemann arrived on the bridge, slamming the door shut behind hira and then waiting. Nopagos spoke with dignity. 'You think I would destroy my own men? Because you are a soldier you think you are the only one with responsibilities?' He looked down at the gloved hand which held his forearm. 'You are hurting me, Colonel. This is no moment to panic. You must leave it to Schnell – or hand over the wheel to me.' Burckhardt relaxed his grip, let go, his eyes still on the Greek's face. No hint of triumph, no suggestion of treachery in those steady eyes; only a touch of resignation. Burckhardt was unmoved by the suggestion that bis nerve was going – it was immaterial to him at this moment what Nopagos thought so long as he got the truth out of the man. And he believed him. The tilt of the deck almost threw him clear across the bridge as the Hydra heeled over again, but the soldier who was guarding Nopagos saved him. Holding firmly onto the rail Burckhardt listened while Hahnemann reported that all was well below but more than half the unit was sea-sick. As Hahnemann spoke Burckhardt was waiting for the first grind and shudder as the ferry struck. The lieutenant completed his report, saluted, and left the bridge. He closed the door as water surged over the port side, enveloping him when the wave broke against the bridge, and for a moment Burckhardt thought he had gone, but when the flood subsided Hahnemann was still clinging to the rail and he took advantage of the respite to dash below.
The not unexpected news he had brought depressed Burckhardt: within three hours the unit had to go ashore and the landing might be opposed. For such an operation the troops should be in the peak of condition and already half their energy must have drained away under the impact of their experiences so far – and the voyage was not yet accomplished. In fact, the worst probably lay ahead. Suppressing a sigh, he turned to face the cliffs and saw only spray. A second later every man on the bridge was petrified and their expressions of hypnotized fear were etched on Burckhardt's mind – a long drawn-out grinding noise was heard and the ship shuddered. She had struck! The message flashed through his brain and then the engines, which had missed a beat, started up reluctantly, and he knew that it was this which had caused the diabolical sound and tremor. He caught Dietrich's eye and the Abwehr man nodded, as much as to say, yes, this is gruelling. Burckhardt turned to look ahead as the vessel climbed, the spray faded and the entrance to the gulf appeared again. Within minutes their position had changed radically and they were now lying close to the narrows and well clear of the Zervos cliffs. But within a matter of only a few more minutes an even graver crisis faced them.
The enormously powerful cross-current which had carried them clear of the cliffs now threatened to carry the Hydra to a new and equally total destruction. From the bridge Burckhardt could now see why Nopagos had advised the apparently suicidal course of steaming directly for the notorious cape – it was an attempt to take them close enough to the narrows to pass through the bottleneck before the cross-current swept them sideways beyond it. The Greek mainland to the west lay several miles away, but from its distant coast a chain of rocks stretched out across the gulf entrance, a chain which ended close enough to the cliffs of the Zervos peninsula to compress the entrance dangerously narrow. And the only navigable channel, Schnell had explained earlier, lay through the bottleneck, guarded by the last rock in the chain. Burckhardt was staring grimly at that rock as the ferry ploughed its way forward towards the entrance, half its engine-power neutralized by the insidious sideslip motion of the cross-current which, only a few minutes before their saviour, was fast becoming their most deadly enemy.
In size the rock was more like a small island, a pointed island which rose straight out of the sea to its peak, a saw-toothed giant against which a warship might well destroy itself at the first impact, whereas the ferry they were aboard was a little more fragile than a steel-plated cruiser. Mountainous waves were surging half-way up the rock's face and the bursting spray smothered its peak. It had the appearance of waiting for them.
'It is fortunate that we did not plan to scale the so-called cliff path,' Eberhay commented. He had said the first thing which came into his head to break the tension permeating the bridge like a disease. 'I hardly imagine it would have been a great success,' he went on lightly. "There might have been some difficulty in disembarking the troops at the base of the cliff.'
'I don't believe there is a path,' Burckhardt replied. When the operation had been planned one of the experts had mentioned this path which he said climbed the apparently sheer face in a series of zigzag walks leading eventually to the summit close to the monastery. Superficially, it had seemed an attractive idea – Burckhardt could have taken his main objective soon after landing instead of going to the head of the gulf and then marching twenty miles back down the peninsula. From the monastery he could have sent out patrols to the north to occupy the peninsula from the heights – the operation would, in fact, have taken place in precisely the reverse direction from the one now contemplated. The operation had been revised to its present form when the planners had realized that the Greek ferry reached the cape in the early hours of the morning; the prospect of scaling the cliffs at night had, been considered impracticable and the ferry had to complete its run to preserve the appearance of normality up to the last moment.